Events

So, How Was The New Smaller Taste of Chicago? Smaller.

Running half as long as the ten-day fests of past years, the Taste of Chicago drew about half as many people this year, about 1.2 million compared to 2.35 million for the ten-day festival last year. And while that may be encouraging, at least, that daily attendance stayed steady, it’s a third of what attendance was in the peak years of 2006-7, when 3.6 million attended the festival. The festival surely can count its luck in that it came during a cooler week in a hot month, which perhaps made up for the fact that the festival wasn’t during the 4th of July weekend. Longtime vendors such as Eli’s Cheesecake seemed reasonably happy with sales during the festival; we’ll see how this year’s experiment with single day pop-up vendors fared. [Sun-Times]

So, How Was The New Smaller Taste of Chicago? Smaller.